Virucide vs antiviral

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Senior Member

My bloodwork finally shows that I have high levels of hhv6, and reactivated ebv & parvovirus, so I'm supposed to try valcyte.
From what I read online, antiviral don't kill the virus, only something called virucides do.

So why don't we prescribe virucides then? I don't want to deactivate the virus (that van later reactivate), I want to destroy it.

Are there no medicines that are virucides? (Obviously not going to ingest bleach or Lysol )

Senior Member

If I'm remember correctly, I think Dr. Montoya said something to the effect that the goal of using the antivirals like Valcycte is to stop the reproduction of the virus so that new cells do not have it in their DNA--essentially stopping the cycle. The treatment takes so long though because you have to wait for the current cells affected by the virus to die off. So as a visual, if water is the virus, you are turning off the faucet but you still have to wait for what is inside the bathtub to drain.

Someone with more knowledge on all this could probably give you a better answer though. That was just my vague, sketchy recollection and I wasn't sure I was understanding it all myself.

Senior Member

Senior Member

My uneducated guess is that since our body is made up of all these cells, you would be killing the person along with the virus. We still need those cells until new ones come on the scene. (So in a way my bathtub analogy was a bad one. We can't really empty out first to rebuild. Sorry. ) Like someone else said, "Rome wasn't built in a day." Our bodies need time to rebuild too.

Senior Member

These viruses can incorporate themselves into every new cell. They're not in the system separate from our cells. I mean in beginning they are, but once they start attaching to a cell body and then using that cell body to replicate, then they are a part of us.

Is there such a thing as a "virucide" vs. an "anti-viral" that a human could safely take? I actually do not know the answer myself but I have never heard any doctor mention this. It's a very interesting idea though.

Senior Member

Is there such a thing as a "virucide" vs. an "anti-viral" that a human could safely take? I actually do not know the answer myself but I have never heard any doctor mention this. It's a very interesting idea though.

Senior Member

Virology is a complex subject, and it takes years reading about it to even begin to understand the full picture.

The viruses linked to ME/CFS (coxsackievirus B, echovirus, EBV, HHV-6, cytomegalovirus and parvovirus B19) are generally impossible to fully eradicate from the body, because they hide their viral genome (the genes to build a new virus) inside human cells.

One of the ways they do this is by a mechanism called viral latency. Latency is where the virus hides away, in order to come back and fight another day.

For example, HHV-6 will actually insert its own genes into your genes, so that the virus becomes part of your own DNA. This is called chromosomal integration. So then when HHV-6 wants to awaken from latency, and start producing more viral particles, it can do so using its viral DNA which it has stored inside your DNA.

Viruses like EBV and cytomegalovirus also store their genome inside your cells for latency purposes, so that they can start producing new viral particles in the future. In these cases, these viruses store their DNA as episomes, which they put inside your cells.

Enteroviruses like coxsackievirus B and echovirus are not able to enter latency, but use another way to store their viral genomes inside your cells: they store their genome in a string of double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) in your cells. These strings of dsRNA are called non-cytolytic enteroviruses, and they live entirely within human cells. Dr John Chia and others believe that non-cytolytic coxsackievirus B and non-cytolytic echovirus may be a major cause of ME/CFS.

So even if you use an antiviral or virucidal substance to kill off all the viral particles floating in your blood and tissues, you will usually not be able eradicate the virus from your body, because the virus has hidden its genetic instructions inside your cells, and is thereby able to make new viral particles at any time it pleases in future.

If we wanted to fully eradicate a virus from the body, we would probably have to develop new drugs that can destroy viruses in their latency states, and in their non-cytolytic states.

In terms of the difference between antivirals and virucidal compounds, generally virucides are too harsh to use in the body, as they destroy viral particles by mechanisms such as bleaching, and obviously you cannot drink bleach.

Antivirals are perfectly adequate for destroying viruses, as they work by inhibiting viral replication. Once a viral particle enters a cell, it will typically replicate itself around 20,000 times, creating 20,000 new viral particles. So if you can prevent this replication, as antiviral drugs do, then you are preventing millions of new viruses from being created in your body.

Senior Member

That is interesting and in the beginning of my illness (which was viral and had not turned autoimmune yet), I took a pretty high dose of Monolaurin every day. It was prescribed by a naturopath (before I found any of my current doctors) and she said it can kill everything: viruses, bacteria, fungi, etc. The problem with it (for me) is that it caused nausea and diarrhea and I had to keep lowering the dose and then finally stopped taking it. I never realized though that Monolaurin was considered a "virucide"!

Senior Member

Monolaurin is thought to have some virucidal effects via damaging the lipid coating of enveloped viruses, and also monolaurin has antiviral effects as well. But that does not really mean much on its own; it's the potency of a compound against viruses that counts, and I think monolaurin only has very modest potency, compared to highly potent antivirals like Valcyte.

Oxymatrine likely works for ME/CFS by ramping up the Th1 response of the immune system, which is the immune mode that fights viruses and intracellular infections. Dr Chia pioneered the use of oxymatrine for treating enterovirus-associated ME/CFS. I am not sure if oxymatrine is effective for herpesvirus ME/CFS.